


A Father's Love

by forcevalentine



Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Reginald Hargreeves' Notes, The Hargreeves Siblings Need a Hug, The Hargreeves Siblings are Kids, They were just kids, reginald hargreeves is a dick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25986736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forcevalentine/pseuds/forcevalentine
Summary: “In closing I’d like to remark that I never desired to break the children. I merely sought to foster their potential—Which was unfortunately never that vast.”
Relationships: Allison Hargreeves & Reginald Hargreeves, Ben Hargreeves & Reginald Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves & Reginald Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & Reginald Hargreeves, Luther Hargreeves & Reginald Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Reginald Hargreeves, Reginald Hargreeves & The Hargreeves, Reginald Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 1
Kudos: 41





	A Father's Love

_“Hargreeves was asked, ‘Why have you adopted these seven children?’_  
_To which Hargreaves replied, ‘To save the world, of course!’_  
_To which the world asked, ‘From what?’”_

* * *

Reginald Hargreeves hated children. This was one, single, undeniable fact about his life that no one had ever tried to challenge. There were never any cries of, _'But what if your wife wants one?'_ nor were there any questions about _'What about your family name?'_ He had his reasons to hate them, and he had even more to not want them.  
Children, you see, were messy creatures. Not only were they messy but they were incredibly unintelligent. So unintelligent that he had wondered how anyone had ever managed to deal with it in order to raise just one. It was better not to ask him about those who had more than one, Reginald thought people with multiple children were somewhere between the realms of mentally disturbed and masochist. He could never picture himself with a single child, much less with seven. Maybe it was just human children that he disliked, though.  
Those closest to Hargreeves, though, had reason to suspect that he didn’t hate children quite as much as he let on. But those closest to him also assumed this was more Grace's doing than any true change of heart on Reginald's part.  
No matter the case, to the public eye Reginald was not only horrible to children but the most unfit choice of a father.  
This was why his decision to adopt even one child, much less seven of them, had been such a shock to the entire world. Perhaps, even, the whole universe. Maybe even Reginald himself.  
What had been an even bigger shock, to Reginald and the world, was that he had a favorite.  
Number One was different from the rest of his siblings in more than one sense. One of these being that Reginald actually liked him.  
He didn’t like the child enough to give him an actual name apart from Number One, but on more than one occasion he would invite the boy to come with him on a walk around the property. Reginald found that Number One's company was preferable to anyone else's. The boy minded his manners, and had ambitions that aligned with Reginald's own. Dare the old man say that Number One was like a miniature him, just better at aviation.  
These were just a few of the reasons why Reginald liked him, but there were plenty more. Enough that Reginald had once complied a list of reasons why Number One was _almost_ the perfect son ( almost being a very strong word there, nothing could ever be the perfect child for Reginald. Especially not a human child ).   
Number One was, without a doubt, the only one of the children that Reginald had ever liked. This was one of the many things that Reginald had not kept secret, and had allowed more than just his notebooks to know. To claim Number One publicly as his favorite worked well in his favor for multiple reasons. One of which, was to motivate the boy more.  
In doing this Reginald, of course, damaged the child in the sense that Number One was as emotionally stunted as the rest of his siblings, and had never learned to deal with the idea that people might actually dislike him.   
This was a risk Reginald had been willing to take though. He wasn't raising a group of people in touch with their emotions who could function in society, he was training the world's only hope.  
To cut a long story short: despite openly claiming Number One as his favorite, Reginald did not truly care for him at all. Who cared if he ended up alone, emotionally inept, and unsure of any true life goal after he completed a mission?  
As long as he was prepared to die saving the world, Reginald had once wrote, does it really matter how he feels?

Number Two, on the other hand, was without a doubt Reginald’s least favorite of the children. Granted, though, this was not a very hard position to achieve. The creature was loud, reckless, and his skills were of little if any use. There were times when training it that Reginald had considered putting it back up for adoption. Though, there had been times he had considered killing it would be a more merciful approach to the human race.  
Number Two was less of a son to Reginald, and more of something he was watching as a favor to an outside party.  
The best pairing of words Reginald had ever found to describe the second child he had adopted was an insolent brat. It was a title Reginald was completely sure Number Two would hold its entire life.  
When the children were young, and were beginning to grow bored of their training, beginning to grow lazy to say the least, Reginald had decided to give them their numbers.  
Up until that point he had been calling them _Boy_ , _Girl_ , or more commonly _Child_. On occasion he had even reached as far as to call them _Brat_ in the private company of Grace and Pogo, but after Pogo had scolded him enough for such treatment, he decided to eliminate that from his dialect.  
The children had never had names and he had never intended to give them such a thing. To name them would almost be to say Reginald loved them.  
He had picked their numbers very carefully, in a way that would demonstrate their usage to him. But also in a way that would motivate them.  
It was for that very reason that Number Two was Number Two, and not a lower ranking number. To call him anything lower would not have the same effect as calling him second.  
The title that was meant to permanently remind him of his place in not only the house, but the outside world as well. It was meant to remind Number Two that he was not just inadequate as a son, student, and savior but also as a man. Reginald had concluded, even when the children were very young, that Number Two would be a man driven by no other means that testosterone. He knew that if he gave the child a number meant to make him feel inferior, that once that child had grown into a man he would continue striving for greatness.  
To name the child _Number Two_ was to call him ' Just not good enough. '  
The number did what it was meant to for a while. It had motivated the boy to try harder. He not only tried harder in his academics, or in training, but also at listening to Reginald. Even if he was reluctant in doing so, he was becoming a dog that was almost as well trained as Number One. But that was the key word for number two. _Almost_.  
He was _almost_ good enough.   
He had _almost_ hit the target.   
He had _almost_ beat Number One.  
Reginald was _almost_ proud.   
But as Number Two grew into a teenager, he had realized the pattern. He had realized that he would never be good enough for Reginald, and had stopped trying all together. He no longer wanted his father's praise, instead he wanted to do something great. He wanted to save people, even if only from petty things like robbers. He had developed a hero complex.  
After all, what was second place if not just the first loser?

The third child was a painfully narcissistic creature that gave Reginald a headache if nothing else. It was for the girl’s existence alone that Reginald put soundproof padding along the walls of his office, so that he could no longer hear her voice when it carried.  
Being one of the two sisters among a group of brothers, Reginald would often regard her as one of the easiest to raise.  
Though, there was very little raising that he ever really did with any of the children. So what he truly meant by this was she was one of the easiest to ignore. It was rare that she hurt herself, and if she ever did she instantly ran to ask Grace for help. It was rare that she ever came to Reginald.  
It was rare for Number Three to bother Reginald at all, but was even less likely for her to bother him when he was in his office. The few times she did it was to ask him for something. In these moments he found it easiest to dismiss her, absently agreeing to what she wanted. If it proved a distraction, or if she used it outside of the designated time scheduled for recreational activities, he could always give it away.  
It was for this reason that most of the time she got whatever it was she asked for, but only because to argue with such an insufferable creature was not his time.  
But because of this, she had earned herself a title among her siblings as being _' The Spoiled Brat, '_ or even _' Daddy's Little Girl. '_ Once, a reporter had even wrote that she was Reginald's favorite. That had not gone over well with Number One, and even though he was probably one of the few people in the house to enjoy her company he even distanced himself from her after that remark. It was this distance that had been created that led for her to do the one thing that she would later come to regard as her biggest regret. But what else was she going to do?  
This was where her track record of using her powers for her own selfish, personal gain had began. Reginald did not mind so much as her being selfish, as he did that sometimes after this was pointed out to her she would become rather emotional and hard to train. Whereas he had regarded the girls as the easiest to raise, due to how easy they were to dismiss, their emotions made them incredibly volatile. Because of this, they were incredibly hard to train.   
Incredibly hard, but not quite impossible in the circumstance of Number Three.  
These times that she would ask Reginald for something were the only interactions he ever had with the girl outside of training and scolding her when she was caught out of bed late at night. He never let her know, but he had always known she was coming from Number One's room. It's why he had left their rooms so close together, so that she stopped waking Number Four on her way back to bed.  
For this reason, you could possibly dare to say that Reginald was fond of her. You might dare to say that she was _' Daddy's Little Girl '_ and that he might even love her. That maybe he was proud of just one of his children.  
But to say any of this, that he did more than tolerate the child, was a stretch.

Out of all of the children, Reginald had held the highest expectations for Number Four. This was a child who actually could commune with the dead, and Reginald was willing to believe there was much more that he could do.  
He was willing to believe that Number Four might be able to raise the dead, with the right motivation of course.  
This child, though, had given Reginald the hardest time in training. He was as volatile as the girls, while being just as stubborn as the boys. If Number Two was Reginald's least favorite, Number Four was a close second. Reginald soon came to realize that to train the boy would mean he had to break the boy. His hand truly had been forced in the matter.   
This method was why he had left Number Four in the cemetery.  
When he came to pick the child up, the time when he really brought Number Four home, he knew he had succeeded. He knew the boy would never quite be the same. It was in this time that Number Four began writing on his walls, but Reginald had never inquired very much as to what the writing meant. Even the more absurd things like _'Don't feed the animals.'_   
He knew, somehow, that these were statements from the ghost even without the confirmation of Number Four. He also knew that his actions were what had led the child to recreational drug use. He was knew precisely what he had done to the boy, and when he started to feel maybe even an ounce of guilt Reginald would remind himself:  
What good would Number Four be to him, to the academy, if he could not put his fears aside for one, short day!  
What good would Number Four be if he could not see past himself, and for one moment be selfless for his siblings?   
This train of thought soon made Reginald wonder how selfish these children were.  
It soon dawned on Reginald, specifically when he found Number Four collapsed in the back of the property smelling of alcohol and marijauna, that Number Four would not put these fears aside even if it meant helping his team. The fourth child would never allow himself to be sober, never again, even for one short moment. He would never allow himself to look outside of himself and ask not what his team could do for him, but what he could do for his team.   
Number Four was the most selfish of the children.  
Of all of them, Reginald had thought Number Four had the most potential, and he had been let down tremendously.  
He was Reginald’s greatest disappointment, and remained so until the day Reginald Hargreeves died.

The fifth child was the most arrogant of them all, a side effect from being the most ambitious of the siblings. His potential was only greater than the rest because of his ceaseless need to know, to understand. He had a thirst for knowledge that could never quite be quenched, no matter what he did.  
It was a shock to those closest to Reginald that Number Five was not his favorite of the children.  
Though to those who saw Hargreeves from a more critical lens had one logical explanation as to why the fifth child was not his favorite:  
They were too much alike to ever truly like one another.  
Some believed that Number Five was Reginald’s own son, a theory Reginald shut down quickly. He could never afford for these rumors to spread in the uncontrolled fashion of a wild fire.  
Number Five’s want to time travel should have piqued Reginald’s interest, it should have made him curious enough to implement it into the child’s training.  
With as much as the child wanted to adapt Reginald should have been impressed. After all was that not what he had preached to them their entire lives? That if they were ever going to save the world they needed to adapt, to become stronger.  
But he was not ( which raises the question as to if he ever was, and if any of the children could ever truly impress him ). Reginald was only annoyed and only grew more, and more so the more the mention of traveling through time was brought up in conversation.  
You could not force adaptation, and until the child came to understand that he was not ready Reginald would not listen. Until the child understood he was taking bites much too big for his mouth trying to jump years, Reginald would never try to help him understand his potential.  
The child though was not just ambitious, he was stubborn. He needed to know, and thus he was willing to find out. It was not until he was trapped in the end of the world that he ever considered that maybe the old man had had a point in not telling him. So he spent years there, in a dead world, by himself reflecting. Reflecting on what he had done wrong, on what he should have done instead, on what he would telling his father should he ever meet him again.   
In his own ways, Number Five came to love his family more than he had ever known possible. He came to realize he missed Luther's power complex, as well as Diego's defiance. He thought what he missed most was Allison's talk about movies, or even Vanya's violin. Dare he say he even missed the cloud of smoke that emerged from Klaus' room in the mornings, or any of his conversations with Ben? Ben, who he felt closest to via their numbers, who he would never seen again because at some point in that time he had missed Ben had died.   
Worst, even, he missed Grace's cooking, and Pogo's advice. He was even quite sure he might kill for a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich if only he could find one.   
But more than any of that, he missed Reginald. He missed the training, the teaching, the sense of understanding. Because here, in the end, there were no books. There was no drive to do better. Here, there was nothing. Not even his father's cruelness.  
It was no great loss to Reginald that Number Five disappeared without a trace.

Number Six was the first creature to exist that made Reginald have to question exactly how he felt about it.  
The child, if you could call it that, was so loyal that it was almost a fault. He ( it took Reginald some time to accept that Number Six was a male of whatever species he was, something probably more akin to that of a _cephalopod_ than a human from what Reginald had seen ) was willing to do anything Reginald lay before him. He was easy to manipulate into doing the things he didn’t want to do.  
For this reason Reginald was almost impressed by Number Six.  
But his power, as fascinating as it was, was the most grotesque thing that Reginald had ever seen to date. To study the child had been almost impossible until Reginald had learned to control his nausea. Even then, there were still times when Reginald had to dismiss a training session with the child as he could not bare to observe its abilities.  
And then, even on days when he could manage to contain himself, trying to study the portal within the child’s stomach ( the entry and exit way for whatever the being seemingly living inside of him was ) was impossible without Grace interfering.  
It was for that reason he had deduced he could not study the child without killing it, and so his studies on the creature living inside of Number Six came to a halt.  
As did the interaction between the child and Reginald.  
Number Six's death was perhaps the first time the billionaire had felt something similar to love for any of the children. Even Number One had never managed to cause this stir of emotion within the old man.   
The sixth child had died while trying to protect his siblings, and they had let him die. They had failed to help their brother. Of all of the children, the one with a monster inside of it had been the most selfless. He had been the one who might have been able to save the world.  
Reginald never truly forgave his other children for letting their brother die. In fact, after Ben's death, one might even say that Reginald was never any form of gentle with any of the children again.   
Not even Number One.

There was very little that Reginald could say, or write, about Number Seven.  
She possessed a raw, astronomical, power that had fascinated Reginald as soon as he discovered it.  
Her lack of control, or maybe it was her lack of want to control, the power had come as a great disappointment to Reginald. She was the most promising of all seven children, yet lacked the restraint to be trained.  
The choice to block her powers had been a tough decision to make, but ultimately his hand had been forced into making it. The day he gave her the pill, the ones he had made for all of the children in case they became this way, had been the day Reginald Hargreeves felt he had failed. Failed the world, himself, and _her._  
Everything else the child tried to do in life was mediocre after that. It was as if her power were her only true talent.  
Even her music, played on the most precious violin in the world that Reginald had once thought could only produce the most beautiful of songs, was as mediocre as a standard high school band after she started taking the pills.  
She was a waste of Reginald’s time to try and study after that, if he were not sure of her abilities he might even regard her as a waste of space.  
She was utterly useless.

* * *

_“In closing I’d like to remark that I never desired to break the children. I merely sought to foster their potential—Which was unfortunately never that vast.”_


End file.
